


The Sleeping Place

by Smilla



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2008, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-19
Updated: 2011-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-14 21:42:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/153747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Smilla/pseuds/Smilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam knew about graves</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sleeping Place

Even Hope, last Goddess,  
flees from sepulchres

Ugo Foscolo - [On Sepulchres](http://www.androxstudio.com/GFX-Artist/on-sepulchres-dei-sepolcri.html)

-*-

Jess' screams were still loud, drowned the words of the parishioner and his useless reassurances. Those would work on her mother, her wrenched hands, her black dress. On Jess' father, still and rigid at her side.

Sam didn't want comfort, because she'd died bleeding and scared. Burning.

When everybody was gone, Sam stayed at her grave and made his vows. And when Dean put a hand on his shoulder, he shrugged it off. Snarled at him and his flimsy jeans and his unshaved face, while he tried to not retch at the smell of smoke coming from his suit.

-*-

John's burial was made of Sam's tears and Dean's scraped knuckles. Their shared blood.

The swelling around Sam's eye made it hard to see, so did the dark of the sunset, the long shadows of the trees that lengthened menacingly across the small clearing behind Bobby's house. They didn't shade Sam from Dean's fury as he built the pyre, pushing wood and cut branches together as if brute force would beat them into the right shape. Dean used his hands and legs, kicked with his boots and never looked Sam's way, even after John's body burned away to soft ashes.

-*-

Sam cried at Mary's grave because he'd never really cried for her. Arcane creature defined only by her absence, by John's heavy silences and Dean's loss.

He cleared the tombstone of the grown weed and used a tissue to wipe the dust. With his knife he dug gently a hole large enough to welcome the warmed metal of his father's dog-tags. With enough self-persuasion Sam could imagine the heat to be still John's and not his sweaty palm's.

 _She isn't there,_ Dean said and Sam wondered why Dean of all people couldn't understand that graves were places of letting go.

-*-

Sam left in the middle of the day. Bobby didn't try to stop him, didn't help him, but Dean wasn't heavy when Sam picked him up and cradled him against his chest. Sam didn't break open at the way Dean's legs bumped against the furniture. Limp. Dead animal legs.

Driving slowly under a sun bold enough to herald summer, Sam saw a cluster of trees, tall against the sky.

He dug the hole with Dean's shovel out of spite and when Dean was six feet under, he sat and curled his hand around a fistful of soft earth. A promise.

-*-

Sam knew about graves.

He never acknowledged it, but Jess would have liked the swell of earth her tombstone topped, the arms of the weeping willow brushing delicately against it.

John would have approved of the pyre he and Dean burned his body on. A tight nod as the last of the embers flared and died. But his dog-tags were from his life before the hunt and Sam knew that that life was Mary's.

Sam didn't know his mother, but he hoped she knew John had given her his life for twenty-three years. Hoped it was enough to let her rest.

-*-

Dean wouldn't like where Sam buried him.

Placid countryside close to an unpaved road. The whooshing sound of the wind and the sporadic passing car. Chirping birds and the low hum of running water not far away, quieter than the buzz of the flies, gentler than the one of the bees as they zinged happily on yellow flowers and past Sam's ears.

Sam could hear Dean, his disgusted voice.

 _What the hell is this?_ Dean would say. _I'm not Sleeping- _fucking_ -Beauty._

 _Shut up,_ Sam would say. _You won't stay here for long._

 _You're not supposed to like it._

\--


End file.
